Hydro Economic Asymmetries and Common-Pool Overdraft in Transboundary Aquifers

The common-pool nature of groundwater resources creates incentives to over pump that contribute to their rapid global depletion. In transboundary aquifers, users are separated by a territorial border and might face substantially different economic and hydrogeologic conditions that can alternatively dampen or amplify incentives to over pump. We develop a theoretical model that couples principles of game theory and groundwater flow to capture the combined effect of well locations and user asymmetries on pumping incentives. We find that heterogeneities across users (here referred to as asymmetries) in terms of either energy cost, groundwater profitability or aquifer response tend to dampen incentives to over pump. However, combinations of two or more types of asymmetry can substantially amplify common-pool overdraft, particularly when the same user simultaneously faces comparatively higher costs (or aquifer response) and profitability. We use this theoretical insight to interpret the emergence of the Disi agreement between Saudi Arabia and Jordan in association with the Disi-Amman water pipeline. By using bounded non-dimensional parameters to encode user asymmetries and groundwater connectivity, the theory provides a tractable generalized framework to understand the premature depletion of shared aquifers, whether transboundary or not.

Automated summary

The common-pool nature of groundwater resources leads to over-pumping. In transboundary aquifers, differences in economic and hydrogeologic conditions between users can either dampen or amplify incentives to over-pump. Combinations of different types of user asymmetry can enhance common-pool overdraft.